


the best that we can hope for is revenge

by meritmut



Category: Les Misérables (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, I listened to FLAG for three days on end and this happened, On the Run, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-10 23:02:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/791196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If it means Cosette never has to, then Éponine will gladly act as her father's accomplice.</p><p>And if it means freeing Éponine from that, Cosette won't hesitate: she'll drive them into the sunset and never look back.</p><p>But of course they look back. They have to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the best that we can hope for is revenge

**Author's Note:**

> For Hannah (: happy birthday love! And I have no idea what happened here. I really don't. Blame Emilie Autumn.

_They're six years old when they decide that they'll never be parted._

Flung together to be sisters, they're never allowed to forget the "foster" part but somehow it only galvanises the bond forged between them - the bond born the first time Cosette holds out her hand to Éponine, who does not take it, but smiles to show that she wants to.

She had heard her parents mutter about this waif they have agreed to take in, and she hesitates to show kindness because anything that makes them so anxious - so displeased - can't be good, can it? But Cosette turns out to be more than merely _good_ , and though Éponine had resolved to be cruel...she can't.

As the weeks go on and she becomes accustomed to this new presence in the house, Éponine realises that she _wants_ to like this strange child with the eyes like a still winter dawn, with the wavering smile and the small white hands and the heart of untarnished gold. She wants to put her trust in Cosette, because young as she is Éponine is still old enough to know that perhaps her own parents are not worthy of it.

That knowledge comes later, of course, because it's some time after Cosette's first friendly overture that Éponine allows herself to return it.

Cosette likes to wander in their neglected back garden, and she's playing hopscotch on the concrete patio when she stumbles: her shoe needs re-soling and the loose edge caught on a paving stone.

Éponine helps her up again, and after that it's easier than falling.

They are family from that day on, foster-sisters but closer by far than if they'd been born bound by blood; more than what they might have been if they shared genes as well as...well, everything else.

They have no boys to play with yet: there are still years to wait before Gavroche comes along - before Courfeyrac and Bahorel become regular fixtures in their lives - so when the girls play at knights-and-dragons they take turns to be the hero and the princess. They act out their own weddings and neither wants to be the husband (they both want the dress and the veil and they bicker for a moment or two before Cosette declares that they'll simply have to both be the bride - it's not like they need a husband around anyway, husbands don't do much if their Maman's complaints about her own are anything to go by).

They are nearly seven years old and, as far as it matters, inextricable from one another. It's hard at home sometimes and she does her best to protect Cosette from her parents' ill moods, but when they curl together in her bed and she feels Cosette's fingers knotting warm and sweaty with her own, Éponine knows this is how it's supposed to be.

_They're fourteen, the first time Cosette leans in and gives Éponine the kiss she deserves._

It's a small, sweet thing - not cautious, Cosette's too brave to fear rejection - but it lingers on her mouth like a brand, and when Cosette pulls away Éponine can't help sticking out her tongue to run it across her lips as if she might taste something of her friend there, left behind in the lingering love of that kiss.

There are others after that, some small and seemingly meaningless - just a tenderness between best friends, soon forgot - some slow and so achingly intimate that even when they're with the boys they might as well be alone. Their favourite game is pretending they _are_ alone.

"The boys" being Courfeyrac and Bahorel, the former of whom has been Cosette's second-best friend since they were nine years old and the latter of whom has hung around with Éponine since they were both eight. It's not long before they all realise how similar they are - like Cosette, Courf is warm and kind and effortlessly charming, while Bahorel shares with Éponine a reckless kind of courage as well as a smart mouth, a good heart, a white-toothed grin and, often as not, a black eye.

When Joly comes along, much later, it's with some amusement that he notes how they seem - miraculously - to have found kindred souls in each other.

To this day, Cosette's half-certain not even he knows which pairs he was actually talking about.

The four of them spend summers and winters and giggle-filled nights in side-by-side tents together and Éponine gets into all kinds of trouble with Bahorel, but no one will ever replace Cosette for her and both boys know it. Neither he nor Courf are what you'd call _shy_ but even they'll turn their eyes elsewhere when the girls steal their moments from the day - when Cosette leans in to place kisses upon Éponine's soft skin (Éponine might be fearless but Cosette is simply bold, and usually the one to initiate it when they're not on their own), when they tangle their fingers together and pretend their lives are different.

They're good at pretending, but there's one thing they never have to and that's how necessary they are to each other.

_They're nineteen when they run._

"We're going. Tonight."

At first Éponine isn't sure she heard right. Everything is a little vague right now, with her ears ringing and her skull pounding and what feels like a pneumatic drill going to work behind her eyes, and Cosette's naturally soft voice doesn't help things, but there's little else she could've said and Éponine knows, in that small unbroken part of her that can still step back and look at her life without wanting to put an end to the damn thing, that tonight has been the last straw for both of them.

Cosette is tired of tending bruises. Cosette is tired of seeing Éponine close down. Cosette is tired of witnessing the slow and systematic destruction of the one person she loves most in the world.

Cosette is more than tired: she is furious.

Éponine lifts her head from the pillow. Cosette stands at the window, maintaining an otherwise silent vigil while her other half (that's what they are, halves of the whole and doubly close for it) drifts in and out of a dream-filled slumber, waking only long enough to glance at the clock every now and again. It's through this absent-minded timekeeping that Éponine happens to know that Cosette has kept this watch for close to an hour and a half now and doesn't appear to have moved in that time. She's barely visible, a bump and a faint silhouette beneath the curtains that aren't quite thick enough to keep out the streetlights beyond the house, but Éponine can feel the other girl's frustration.

"What?" she sounds as shitty as she feels, but she can't bring herself to care about that.

"We're not staying here," Cosette announces. "You and me. We're going."

Éponine sighs, wondering if Cosette knows how impossible it is, this thing she suggests.

Pushing herself up from the bed to stagger over to the window, she tugs the curtain aside, slips her arms around Cosette's waist and pulls her close, resting her head on the shorter girl's shoulder. Cosette leans in, placing her warm hands over Éponine's own.

"Where?"

Cosette gives a tiny shrug. "Anywhere. We've some money..."

 _"You've_ some money," Éponine corrects, "for college. You aren't touching that."

"Now's not the time for pride-"

"It's not pride, it's sense. You need that money."

Cosette twists in her arms and brings her hands up to push the hair back from Éponine's face, her fingers soft and tender and sad as her eyes in the darkness. "I need you more. I need you safe and happy and I don't care where we are, so long as it's not here."

"I..."

"I can't see this happen again, Ép. I won't. I'll go mad."

Éponine reaches up to cradle Cosette's jaw with trembling hands, barely even touching yet still she can almost feel the anger that vibrates across her almost-sister's skin. Feel it, because it burns inside her too.

She never meant for this to happen. She'd never meant for any of it to: no matter the love she's supposed to have for her father she never wanted to get caught up in his claws. But she has, and digging those thorns from her skin might free or kill her, she hasn't decided yet. She does know for sure that she's no better than him now: a petty criminal, a hard-edged shadow of what she once was - what she might have become one day - a punching bag and a weapon all in one.

(Thénardier's good like that, he can shape you into a knife or a shield or a lamb for the slaughter, and with his eldest girl he has all three in one. She's tough and she is - or she was - without fear, fierce in a fight and vicious when cornered. And resilient, so resilient. Cosette loves that about her - how she refuses to bow down and become like her father. How she can still hate what she does for him because she's not so far gone as to accept it.)

She's barely a legal adult but she knows her way around, and she's damned if she won't put it to better use one day. A use that won't get her injured, with any luck.

This time it's a dislocated shoulder, a wrenched elbow and what feels like a cracked collarbone. It gets harder every time to justify this, to go back and hold her head high and help her father lie and cheat and scam and steal, to accept the brutality of the game she plays. But she won't resent it, she's worked twice as hard for him and kept Cosette safe through it and that is enough to buy her obedience.

They pack in silence and slip out through the back door and they're gone before the dawn's first light. Éponine reasons that when he finds them gone her father will expect them to have hit the road straight away, and he'll hunt them down as if they have, so they might just stand a better chance of making it if they lie low in town for a day before they leave.

Bahorel shelters them for the rest of the night and the following day: he doesn't ask but he knows because he's no stranger to running, he's been escorted and dragged home and come back on his own so many times and when they turn up at his parents' door with their few bags he doesn't _need_ to ask.

The three of them head up to his room as quietly as they can so as not to wake his family. They need sleep before they go and they don't waste the chance to rest in a proper bed, because the next time it'll be the backseat of Cosette's tiny car and after that, who knows?

Bahorel offers to come with them just to see them safe, but Cosette wears a look like flint and Éponine is the toughest girl he's ever met so when they shake their heads he doesn't push it, doesn't blame them either for their reticence - he's one of the two men in the world they like and trust but he's still a man, still something Cosette will never quite forgive for the sins of others of his gender.

(Cosette has hardened too over the years, ossified into a more bitter incarnation of the wide-eyed child who'd taken the hand of her foster-sister and not let go since. She's still kind and compassionate and the loveliest thing Éponine has ever known, but she's...she is harder. A fighter for more than survival, for happiness too. The ones who've hurt them will not escape justice -but if they do, Cosette knows she has it within her to exact revenge instead.)

They manage a few hours' rest curled together in his bed - it's too small for them all but they make it work, they've done this before: he takes the middle and keeps an arm around them both and they sling a leg each over his. It's warm and a squeeze but the rise-and-fall of Bahorel's chest beneath her head is a lullaby all of its own, so Éponine doesn't mind too much as she drifts off again.

Besides, she thinks to herself, reaching over his abdomen to link hands with Cosette, he smells _really_ good. She'll miss him more than she can say.

There's a symbiotic kind of strength that passes between them as they lie: they're all quiet, there's no traffic outside to keep them awake and Bahorel's curtains do a better job of blocking out the light than their room at home (home no longer, she reminds herself) and here in the last few hours of peace before the long drive ahead of them, Éponine knows that her friend is the last solid ground either of them will feel beneath their feet for a long time.

_They've been on the road a month when Éponine realises they're probably not searched for anymore so much as hunted._

They started small in their hypocrisy: left roadside diners without paying, stole essentials from petrol stations because the money Éponine refuses to let Cosette touch sits in an account accessible only by card, and therefore easy enough to find if you've friends in the right places (and her father does, he wouldn't be walking free now if he didn't).

Small things, enough to prick Cosette's conscience but all it takes is a glance Éponine's way for her to remind herself that there's nothing she wouldn't do to keep her safe.

Éponine, for her part, will not let these little crimes assault her wavering moral compass. It's to survive; need, not greed, and no one is hurt. That's what sets it apart from the deeds done under her father's will.

No one is hurt.

Then comes the night they're walking back to the car, and the catcalls ring out across the near-empty lot.

The young men might not mean harm but they mean no good, and Cosette has more anger simmering beneath her fair skin than she's let on to Éponine until this instant - the instant her fist goes swinging and catches the nearest caller in the jaw, dropping him with astonishing ease.

The other stranger hadn't expected such wrath from this willowy girl; the sylph whose hair glints silver in the moonlight and whose eyes flash coldly as she turns to him, but having seen his companion floored he throws up his hands in a gesture of surrender that might've been funny in other circumstances, picks up the one on the ground, and they hightail it back toward their car.

 _"Alouette,"_ Éponine murmurs, reaching out. Her fingertips skim Cosette's cheek lightly - Cosette closes her eyes, takes a shuddering breath, and when she opens them again they shimmer for an entirely different reason.

"I can't believe I did that," she says, and Éponine doesn't hesitate. She opens her arms and Cosette falls into them, her own coming up to grip Éponine as if she fears something will come and tear them apart.

 _Nothing ever has,_ she reassures herself, _nothing ever will._

"I just..." Cosette's trying to explain - Éponine is the last person on Earth she'd need to justify herself to but still she tries, she has to get this out. "I saw him and I saw everyone who ever hurt you..."

She hates violence; abhors it; cleaves to the faded hope of a peaceful life like the dreamer to the night, but she's given up hope of justice ever finding those who tried to take their peace away.

They leave quickly after that and keep to the road as much as possible in the following weeks. Their money goes on petrol (they still have Cosette's emergency account, and thank all the gods for her biological mother's hard work and saintly heart is all Éponine can think) and food and other essentials, and the next few weeks involve a few more incidents like the one in the car park - usually it's Éponine doing the fighting, that first time was the only time Cosette's been faster with her fists - and a few more hypocrisies that take the form of doe-eyed scams and plain old pickpocketing. The list of things she might never forgive herself for grows day by day until it weighs like a rope of lead about her neck, but if it means they are free from harm then a hypocrite she can be.

Éponine finds herself adapting to life on the road. There's freedom in it, a similar kind of freedom to when she would sneak out in the middle of the night and wander the streets, singing to herself in the rain and once even the snow...

Cosette doesn't find it so easy. She loves the solitude; she loves being free to interrupt her own speech to steal a kiss from Éponine whenever she likes, but the constant travelling puts her on edge and the glittering haze of the sun beating down on the endless stretches of open road do little to soothe her nerves, or to reassure her that there's an end to this interminable drive in sight. In the autumn she has university but until then they are at liberty with their thoughts and their dreams and their ghosts, and eventually she comes to realise that they've only ever been putting off the inevitable.

They could've asked Bahorel for his help and might never have needed to leave town at all.

_Justice is the ideal, of course, but it's a long time since she's been averse to the idea of vengeance._

So when their journey takes them slowly back east, Éponine is only half-surprised because gentle-hearted Cosette has worn a look of iron in her eyes for too long now for her sister to imagine them free of the past. Cosette, the girl who laughs and smiles and tends to cuts and bruises, who kisses Éponine's scars as sweetly as she kisses her mouth and cried when she realised why it was Éponine continued to help her wicked father, has become something of an avenging angel on this exorcism of a journey.

And Éponine is not certain precisely when it was they went from running from, to actively seeking out her father and his men, but as the girls and Bahorel watch the gang being led away in cuffs (revenge doesn't always mean violence, Cosette says pointedly, smiling freely for the first time in months and moving willingly into her grinning lover's arms), she could hazard a guess it was in her angel's mind all along.


End file.
